The Philips Ambilight system was a neat idea where lights behind the unit caused the wall – or ambient area – behind it to glow in concert with what was on a television. Although, like 3D glasses around 2010, it didn’t catch on as much as Philips was hoping, it had at least one fan dedicated enough to build his own system.
Tobias created his system using a red-green-blue (RGB) color sensor available from Adafruit, as well as an Arduino and NeoPixel strip. Details and code for this project can be found on its GitHub page.
Once loaded onto this device, the sketch measures lighting on the telivision via its “measureColor” routine, then the NeoPixel LEDs are commanded to match that color. For a smooth transition between colors, it goes through several iterations to get to the matched color.
As neat as this build is, according to the writeup it wouldn’t replace a proper Ambilight TV or even a Kodi-based solution, but could be used with all types of video of input sources. As also noted, this kind of solution could be implemented with several RGB sensors, allowing for a more accurate lighting representation.
Whether or not you want to reproduce an Ambilight system, this type of sensor could be quite useful for all kinds of lighting projects. It’s definitely one to keep in mind for your next invention!
[h/t Adafruit]